


Soft White Light

by yeats



Series: hearts and bones [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: D/s elements, M/M, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:32:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/pseuds/yeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a long-distance phone call after the most recent clásico.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soft White Light

**Author's Note:**

> written for someone who requested phone sex on the new [football kink meme](http://football-kink.dreamwidth.org/1203.html?thread=65459#cmt65459). much love to [twofortyonebeethree](http://twofortyonebeethree.tumblr.com/) for the encouragement.

After Madrid loses, everyone tries to get in touch with Cris.

He gets calls from his agent, from his sisters, his cousins back in Madeira. Even Iker sends a text, to both him and Sergio: _i leave you assholes along for half a minute, and look what happens._ He talks to each of them briefly, sends Iker a few choice curse words (in Portuguese now- hombre’s gotta get used to it), and shuts off his phone. Honestly, he’s not sure what they want him to say, doesn’t know if he’d be even able to say it.

He doesn’t turn his phone back on until late that night, after he’s put Junior to bed. More messages. Nothing – no one worth dealing with.

Even after ninety minutes of nonstop motion, Cris feels the urge to run, an anxious unease that’s nearly painful. Just drop everything and go, peel out into the night and run as far as his legs will take him.

He leaves his phone on the kitchen counter, and heads to the pool instead.

The faint astringent odor of chlorine pricks his nostrils, and the reflected light off the water throws up strange, flickering shapes on the walls. An inflatable football bobs sadly in the shallow end, one of Junior’s toys. Cris plucks it out. The cheap plastic skids against his fingers, and he tightens his grip: imagines crushing it in his hands, imagines it as a real football. He sets it down on one of the reclining chairs, next to a pair of Junior’s swim goggles.

Cris shucks his clothing and dives in nude, relishes the temperature shock as his body breaks the cool, dark surface. The submerged lights at either end cast long, wavering trails in the water that he follows- sixteen strokes one way, then sixteen strokes back. With each pull of his fingers through the water, the tension seeps out of him in increments, and he slowly gives himself over to the susurrant churn of water over his head.

He swims for a long time, until his fingers start to prune up and his muscles cry out. His legs are coltish, random fast-muscle twitches skittering down his quads as he hauls himself out of the pool, but he prefers this exhaustion — clean, earned — to the thwarted, miserable one that followed him off the pitch earlier today. He finds a Spider-Man towel, ties it around his waist, leaving his clothes for tomorrow. His wet feet make a thwacking sound on the marble floors as he walks back through the dark, quiet house.

Marosca wakes up when he comes back into the kitchen. She looks up from her usual sleeping spot by the windows, sniffing the air. Her tail thumps the ground, and she whuffles accusingly at him.

“I know, I know, I left you behind,” Cris says. He grabs his phone, passes his free hand over her sleek head. Skritches that special spot behind her ears. “Tomorrow we’ll go swimming again, I promise.”

She lumbers to her feet, pushes her dewy nose into the side of his calf. Whuffles again, gentler, and follows him back upstairs.

He places his footfalls as carefully and quietly as he can, eases the door open to Junior’s room. He’s fast asleep, tucked under his Spider-Man duvet. These days, he’s so big, but in sleep he curls in on himself. Cris’s heart expands, inverts and rights itself inside his chest at the sight of his small, huddled form.

He kisses the sweep of dark hair on Junior’s brow, lingers long enough to smell crayons and apples and bubble bath soap. He leaves Marosca there, to curl up at the foot of Junior’s bed. She watches him leave, head settled on her paws like a lion guarding a prince in a fairy tale.

He goes back into his room, turns the lights on low. There’s a full water glass by the side of his bed from last night; he downs half of it in one go. The water is stale and lukewarm, sour after a day of sitting out.

After that, though, he can’t delay any longer. He takes his phone back out and thumbs through his messages, braces himself for the next round of well-intentioned pity and barely-veiled questions about his future.

But there’s Ricky’s face, his smile taking up nearly all of the frame of the tiny profile photo. And a message, sent nearly two hours ago: _call when you can xx._

Cris feels his heartbeat skid in his chest, like boots on dew-soaked grass. His finger’s hitting “call” before he has a chance to think about it or even begin to work out the time zones. The tedious and cruel arithmetic imposed by distance has never seemed so irrelevant as it does now, the moment when the call connects and Cris hears Ricky’s first inhaled breath across the line.

“Hey, you.” Ricky’s voice is impossibly warm, like he’d drawn the Florida sun up into his lungs- but then, he’s always sounded like that with Cris, every time. And in answer, Cris’s pulse quickens like it does every time, all the blood in his veins rushing to the surface to try to get closer to Ricky.

“Hey, hey,” he says, meaningless. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Ricky echoes, chuckling. “It’s not too late, is it? I’m sorry for not calling, I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Hey, come on.” He sits at the foot of his bed, heedless of the damp terrycloth. “You never intrude. You know that.”

Ricky gives a low, pleased sound. Cris’s hands ache with wanting to touch him, to card fingers through Ricky’s hair.

It’s up to him to bring it up, he knows. Ricky’s not the saint everyone thinks he is (no, but he’s better, and he’s mine, Cris can’t help but think), but sometimes it feels like he has the patience of one. He never pushes Cris to talk about what’s bothering him, and sometimes not talking works even better- staying on the line for hours, just listening to each other settle in to sleep. Reminding themselves what it was like to be close.

Tonight, though, Cris needs more than that. Just- more.

He tries for casual. “So, I’m guessing you don’t just want to talk about all the gaudy shit Sergio’s bought for his new nursery?”

“We can, if that’s what you want to talk about.”

“No, that’s not.” Cris swallows. “Did you watch it?”

Ricky hums in assent. “Some of the guys and I did. They showed it at the club, on one of the big screens.”

The bottom drops out from Cris’s stomach. Vertigo swoops through him, the room tilting at a funhouse angle before slamming back into place. All the missed chances, the little miscues and the major fuck-ups, they all flash through his mind in an instant. But not from his own perspective — instead, what it must have looked like outside himself. What Ricky must have seen, watching with a bunch of strangers (not strangers, Cris reminds himself, his teammates now; they’re only strangers to you) as Cris lost, bad and ugly.

He must have looked so small, so weak.

“Well, I’m glad one of us had a nice time,” Cris says. He winces: it comes out so much pettier and nastier than he meant it to. He sounds like a spoiled child, acting out — a parody of a parody of himself.

“Cris, stop it,” Ricky says sharply.

“I’m sorry, that was –” The urge to flee surges up within him again. He catches sight of his running shoes, strewn half-in, half-out of the closet. The paparazzi won’t be back until the morning; he’ll have empty roads and nothing but the rhythm of his feet on the pavement for hours yet.

He stands. “I should go.”

“Cris,” Ricky says again, only this time in another tone altogether: low and careful and god, so familiar. “Stop.”

Powerless as a marionette whose strings have been cut, he sinks back down. His limbs feel heavy and misshaped.

Cris realizes how cold he is, naked and still sitting on the damp towel. The chemicals from the pool have dried, leaving a caked-on residue on his skin and in his hair. He can’t bring himself to clean up, though, or even move.

Ricky waits for him.

_Everything’s going wrong and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t think I can do this for much longer. I don’t know who I am without it._

“It was a bad day,” he manages at last.

“I know, _meu bem._ ” A burst of static on the line as Ricky exhales deeply.

“Ricky,” Cris says, almost pleading. He grips the nubby fabric of the towel tightly to ground himself.

“Listen to me,” Ricky says. As if Cris ever does anything else. “Where are you right now?”

“In my room.” In Madrid, Cris almost adds, though of course Ricky already knows that. The four thousand miles between them lie on top of his bare chest like lead weights. “I’m naked.”

Ricky gives a startled little laugh. “Are you really?”

“I swam a few laps,” Cris explains. “After supper.”

“A few?”

Cris scratches the back of his neck, feels a scrim of minerals flake off under his fingernails. “Like, a half hour? Maybe forty-five minutes.”

“Oh, Cris.” Ricky sighs. Cris can just imagine the face he’s making: brows knit, mouth pulled tight with disapproval. His mom face, as Marcelo once said the Brazilians used to call it: “because like, most of the senior players will yell at you when you screw up? But Ricky, he doesn’t get mad- just _disappointed._ ”

Cris can’t handle disappointing anyone else tonight.

“It was good,” he insists. “I didn’t go crazy with it, I just needed –”

“You need to let yourself rest,” Ricky says firmly. “Lie down, and turn off the light.”

Cris shivers, goes. The satin bedspread is cool and liquid against his skin.

Ricky doesn’t check to see if he’s done as he was told. They both know he doesn’t need to.

“Turn your speaker on.” Cris taps his phone, and Ricky’s voice floats up beside him in the darkness. “Good.”

“I wish you were here,” Cris says.

“Me too,” Ricky says quietly. “If I were there, maybe you’d take better care of yourself.”

Cris swallows. Emboldened by darkness and scrubbed raw with want, he says, “If you were here, you could.”

“Could what?”

Cris closes his eyes. “Take care of me.”

Ricky gives a rough, bitten-off sound that sets Cris’s heartbeat skittering again.

“Don’t move,” he says, and Cris hears it for the promise it is.

He keeps his hands flat on the bed, his head turned towards the opalescent glow of his phone. He slicks his tongue over the fronts of his teeth, and waits.

Listening to Ricky’s steady footsteps, Cris tries to follow his trajectory through the house based on the photos Ricky sent when he first moved in: the curving staircase by the front vestibule leading up to a long hallway, Luca and Isabella’s rooms on the right, and the master bedroom on the left. And sure enough, there’s the slight sigh of the double doors opening, then closing again.

When Ricky comes back on the line, Cris recognizes the shift immediately, even before Ricky says anything. Just by the way he’s breathing, slow and steady. _Controlled._

“Cris,” he says, using that voice again, the one that feels like a firm hand cupping the base of Cris’s skull and pressing down on the attachment sites of the muscles there. It calls up memories of hotel rooms, abandoned storage closets, that bar somewhere in the vast dark heartland of America where no one knew their names.

The hairs on Cris’s arms stand on end. “Please,” he says, nearly a whisper. He’s not even sure what he’s asking for.

Ricky knows, though. “Focus on my voice, okay? Close your eyes, and just listen.”

Cris nods, even though he knows Ricky can’t see it.

“Now, put your hand on your chest, right over your heart. Do you feel that?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Good,” Ricky says, “I want you to focus on your heartbeat, sweetheart. What does it feel like?”

“Like, ah. Fast.” Cris shifts his hand, and his littlest finger brushes against his left nipple by accident. The shock pinballs through his whole nervous system, electricity sizzling under his skin. “Shit, Ricky,” he gasps.

“Are you hard?” Ricky asks, and it’s only then that Cris realizes he is. The blood in his dick pulses in time with his heart.

“Y-yeah,” he manages, and reaches down – but just as his fingers wrap around the shaft Ricky stops him.

“Put your hands on the bed.”

The head of his dick bounces off his abdomen when he lets go, leaving a slick, cool spot on his bare skin. He smacks his hands against the mattress.

“Don’t touch yourself until I say so.” There’s a muffled noise on Ricky’s end, as though he’s set the phone down, is moving about the room.

The soft metallic trill of a zipper being lowered has Cris digging his fingers into the sheets. “Are you naked?” he asks. He knows he’s not supposed to, that’s not how this works, but he can’t help himself.

Instead of answering, Ricky says, “Do you remember Bilbao?”

Cris has to think for a moment. “Three years ago?” There’s a high, white sweetness gathering at the edges of his mind, a quiet that washes in and over him and leaves everything else in the world distant and remote.

“Exactly. Not the part where we won the Liga. After. Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes.” Cris sucks in a breath through his gritted teeth.

“I want you to say it,” Ricky says. “Tell me, _gostoso._ ”

It’s a struggle to find the right words and make them come out in the right order. Everything feels sluggish somehow, like doing wind sprints while wearing heavy ankle weights. He listens to Ricky’s breathing, uses it to steady himself.

“You put your fingers inside of me,” he says slowly. “And then your tongue. And you made me come, without touching me anywhere else.”

“I touched you everywhere else,” Ricky corrects. His voice is like a cool hand to the small of Cris’s back. There’s a little sigh on the line, the first sign Ricky’s given that he’s affected by this, too. “Everywhere except your cock...your whole body, you gave it to me, and I touched you everywhere, for hours, until you couldn’t speak. And you were so beautiful, Cris – every part of you.”

Cris whines, wordless, thrashes his head against the pillow. He turns his face into his phone, as though Ricky were really beside him.

“That’s what I’d do tonight, if I were there with you. I’d go slowly, take my time with my fingers until you were so relaxed I could slide my tongue inside of you. And you’d let me, wouldn’t you? You’d be so open and patient and perfect, Cris, just as God made you – made you for me.”

“Yours,” Cris whispers, confirmation and a plea all at the same time. The muscles in his abdomen spasm from the effort of keeping his body still, a trembling that won’t stop.

“Easy, easy,” Ricky murmurs. “You’re doing so well. You can touch yourself now – but go slow.”

Cris’s hand flies to his cock, and he groans. He bites down on his bottom lip, grips his shoulder with his free hand, hard, to stop himself from speeding up. He’s close already.

“Good,” Ricky says, breathy, as though he can see Cris, “that’s good.” And then he must change the angle of the phone or something, because Cris can _hear_ him touching himself: the rhythmic drag of Ricky’s hand over his erection, the faint creak of the bedsprings as he makes little circles with his hips.

Cris licks his lips. He thinks about the droplets of precome Ricky always gets when he’s close. He can almost see them now, beading the head of Ricky’s lovely cock and sliding down over his fist, slicking up the skin and easing his strokes. He moves his free hand, shoves three fingers in his mouth, tries to pretend that it’s Ricky he’s sucking.

“Stop that.” Ricky’s sharp as a slap on bare skin. “Take your hand out of your mouth – I want to hear you.”

“I’m – ” Cris goes to apologize, reflexive, but Ricky doesn’t let him get the words out.

“Use your wet fingers to open yourself up. Not too fast,” he says, at Cris’s shaky gasp when he first breaches himself. “Like I did in Bilbao.”

Cris pulls his knees up, sinking his heels into the mattress and canting his hips. He spreads his legs a little more, moves his fingers until he finds the right angle and his fingers catch on that golden, shuddery spot inside himself.

“Just like that,” Ricky says in his ear, and Cris moans, does it again. “ _Bueno_ , that’s, yeah, Cris, keep going...love the way you sound... _meu lindo_...” And the sound of Ricky starting to lose it, the way his voice goes vague and wracked with shivers, slipping out of Portuguese, English, Spanish – Cris feels the current tugging in his stomach, pulling him closer to the roaring edge.

“Ricky,” he chokes out in warning, trying to fight it, “Ricky,” because he can’t come, not yet, not until –

Ricky cries out, fragile and almost pained, and Cris knows that sound – the sound of Ricky coming – would know it from five million miles, five million light years away. He imagines how Ricky always looks in that moment, his head thrown back, mouth slack, flushed all the way down his torso. His thighs and stomach glazed with his come, muscles still trembling through the aftershocks.

Cris squeezes his dick to stave off his own orgasm. “Did you?” He’s so close to coming his ears are ringing with it, but he needs to know for sure – he needs to hear Ricky say it.

He can’t let himself come until Ricky does.

“Cris.” Ricky’s voice is rough, his breathing still labored, but he’s so gentle with Cris. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Let me hear you come.”

And that’s all it takes for Cris to finally, finally let go. He comes with a groan that began as Ricky’s name as his body unravels at the seams, every molecule of his being shot through with jagged light.

One by one, his senses trickle back to him. The heat clicks on, prickling his come-splattered skin. Somewhere outside, the whooshing drone of a car driving too fast. He opens his eyes, and it’s a moment before the bursts of sparks across his field of vision dissipate.

Distantly, he hears Ricky’s voice, quiet and distorted, as though underwater. “Cris.”

He turns his head, finds his phone partly buried under a pillow. Reaches for it with still-trembling fingers.

“Sorry,” he says. “The phone fell.” The words threaten to slip away from him; he focuses on enunciating.

“It’s fine,” Ricky says. “How do you feel now?”

“Good,” Cris says. “I – good.”

“You sound good. Much more relaxed.”

“Yeah.” Cris’s eyes are beginning to shut again, each breath tugging his eyelids lower. He’s so tired, but it feels different now. Like he’s floating, rather than sinking.

“You should get yourself cleaned up, sweetheart.”

Cris glances toward the bathroom, but it feels insurmountably far. He gives a noncommittal hum.

“Do the best you can,” Ricky says. “For me?”

Cris sits up. With slow, deliberate actions, he takes a few tissues from the nightstand, wipes his thighs and stomach. He wads the used tissues up into a ball and tosses them in the direction of the wastebasket.

“Nothing but net,” he says.

“Always so competitive.” Ricky laughs. A residual coil of electricity flares in Cris’s chest, tracks down his legs. “Do you have a glass of water?”

Cris nods. Only belatedly, he realizes Ricky can’t actually see him. “Yeah.”

“Drink some.”

He picks up the glass with both hands. Before, the water tasted stale, but now it feels cool and almost sweet as it goes down his throat. He drinks it all in slow, careful sips, keeping the phone close so that Ricky can hear.

“Good, perfect.” It’s the same caring tone he used as when Cris was touching himself.

Cris wipes the last drop from his bottom lip.

“You can lie back down,” Ricky says. “Plug your phone in, and get under the covers.”

Cris goes, setting his phone on the pillow beside him.

“Is your alarm set?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Cris rolls his eyes, and taps a few buttons — and sure enough, Ricky’s right.

“It is _now,_ ” he sniffs. The corners of his mouth keep curling up into a smile. He lets them.

“There you go.”

Cris curls onto his side, tucks his feet behind his knees. The soft white light from the phone feels almost like a halo. “When am I going to see you again?”

Ricky clucks his tongue. “Soon, _meu bem._ ”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Cris lets his eyes drift closed. “You should come for Christmas,” he murmurs.

“You’d want me there with you?” Ricky sounds oddly surprised.

“Of course,” Cris huffs. It seems silly to even have to say it. “Always want you here.”

Ricky’s breathing lulls him. He tries to match his own to it, the way he used to when they slept beside one another. Two bodies, in sync in every way.

Teetering on the precipice of sleep, he hears Ricky’s voice, quiet and hopeful: “Christmas.”

**Author's Note:**

> finally posting a story after literally five years spent fretting about these beautiful children. come find me on tumblr [@freekicks](http://freekicks.tumblr.com/) if you're still not over them either.
> 
> thank you for reading - all comments much appreciated!


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